The Trap: Two Novellas

by Ludovic Bruckstein, Alistair Ian Blyth (Translation)

Bruckstein's two novellas, published for the first time in English, offer a fascinating depiction of rural life in the Carpathians around the time of the Second World War, tracing the chilling descent into disorder and fear of two cosmopolitan communities that had hitherto appeared to be havens of religious and racial acceptance, but which were in fact constructed on foundations of prejudice and discrimination. Bruckstein presents the effects of the Holocaust not only on the Jewish community, but also the wider Christian society. His novellas tell cautionary tales of how gradual changes that individually seem inconsequential can lead to catastrophic alterations in the very fabric of society which, by the time they are acknowledged, are irreversible. These stories serve as a warning that passivity and political apathy can sometimes be just as harmful as actions.

Genres: Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Ludovic Bruckstein was a Romanian writer.

He was born in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), and grew up in Sighet, Maramureș, in the northern region of Transylvania.[

He was the son of Mordechai Bruckstein, the owner of a small factory making walking canes, and exporting medicinal plants. His great-grandfather, Chaim-Josef Bruckstein, a Hassidic rabbi was among the first chassidim.

In Spring 1944, after a few months in the Sighet ghetto, the Bruckstein family, father, mother and four children, were deported to Auschwitz, as were all of the town's Jews. Only Bruckstein and his younger brother, Israel, survived.

Reviews

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruckstein might just be the least known Holocaust survivor novelists. That he has languished for years on the outer is a travesty. The Trap is a disorientating, cleverly constructed gem of a novella, with a twist at once hilarious and heartbreaking. The second novella, The Rag Doll, is more conventional in style but is no less moving. It is also, sadly, very timely. In many ways it reminded me of the two Hanses - Keilson and Fallada. If you dig them, Bruckstein is a must.

[David Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ludovic Bruckstein is a real discovery for me, as a lover of European writing of the Twentieth century. His work is also a contribution to the body of Holocaust literature, valuable in reminding us, as the translator, Alistair Ian Blythe does in his introduction, that the Holocaust engulfed not just Central Europe but Eastern Europe. This was not due only to Nazi occupation - rather, to the Nazi Final Solution linking in to deep-rooted anti-Semitism endemic to Europe, with many fascist governments enthusiastically complicit in the rounding up and exporting of their own Jewish populations for disposal, and even Soviet Russia - as portrayed in The Trap, with the Red Army holding off their march south into Nazi-occupied Romania until it had been cleansed of its Jews.
This book comprises two novellas, of different lengths and different styles, each fitting perfectly their subject matter. The first, The Trap, is short, punchy, heavily ironic. Its protagonist, a young man of devout Jewish family, is rounded up, with fellow Jewish neighbours just before the Sabbath meal, to unload beds for Nazi-commandeered billets; deliberately humiliated in the process - made to pick up straw from the mattresses bare-handed, he vows to avoid further humiliation by taking to the mountains, with knapsack and binoculars, for the summer. He thus watches the later round-up of his and fellow families into a makeshift ghetto, and eventual deportation to who knew where, the deportation rushed as the Red Army sweeps in. Judging it now safe to descend the mountains and return to the now-sealed family house, he is once again rounded up, this time by a Russian officer who needs to make up his assigned number of prisoners. It's a concise and precisely timed novella.
In contrast, The Rag Doll is longer and more narratively spacious, more lyrical in style, and deeply moving in its portrayal of the way that anti-Semitism lingered long after the War, warping personal relationships, even the happiest, and haunting even those who had managed to escape the war-time round-ups and apparently assimilate into Romanian society. It's deeply moving.
Bruckstein himself exemplified the irony of history: having survived the Holocaust because of his youth and fitness (sent to a succession of labour camps), he became persona non grata under Soviet rule after requesting permission to emigrate to Israel, and once he had done so, he and his work were erased from Romanian history. Although his work, including these novellas, were published - in Romanian - in Israel, he has remained unknown to most of us in the West. Now he has been resurrected and given a new lease of literary life - after his death - by the enterprising Istros Books. And I'm delighted to learn from their website that there is at least one more helping to come: a collection of short stories - With An Unopened Umbrella In The Pouring Rain - due early next year. Personally, I can't wait.

[Marina Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a full review see my blog post - loved it! https://findingtimetowrite.wordpress....

[Ilana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ludovic (Joseph Leib) Bruckstein is quasy unknown in the Romanian literary realm and the Jewish literature in Eastern Europe in general. Born in Munkacs (Munkacevo) and growing up in Sziget (Sighet), in the Northern part of Transylvania (Hungary/Romania), in 1972 he left Romania for Israel. While in Romania, he wrote plays and short stories, and taught at the University, but it looks like his name was completely erased from any literary mention. His writings he published in Israel until his death in 1988 caught the attention of the local literary critics and were mentioned in Viata Noastra/Our Life, one of the main publications in Romanian in Israel. Again, he remains largely unknown in his country of origin.

Istros Books brought Bruckstein into the wider, English-speaking literary world, publishing two of his novellas, The Trap and The Rag Doll. Personally, I didn't know what to expect from this book. I've only vaguely heard about him but couldn't place his work in any context, either regional/local or Jewish in general.

The novellas are insightful, with a strength of the storytelling that keeps you captivated during the reading while occupying your mind with many general human questions after you've finish.

The Trap takes place in the context of the humiliations Jews had to deal with daily in his native Sighet. 'How easily a man accustoms himself to everything! Even to his own humiliation' says Ernst, the main character of the story. The friendly town he returned to from his architecture studies in Vienna 'had become a prison with invisible walls, and he had to escape from those walls'. He will survive the war, for ending up deported by the Russians following a completely absurd occurence. But besides the story in itself, written in the cadence of the old Hassidic stories told by the itinerant storyteller or the maggid there is something else that struck me: the fact that most situations and characters are in fact hiding behind the friendly welcoming appearance a darker side. From the beautiful walls of the Palace of Culture to the German polite/distant attitude of the art student from Berlin turned into SS cruel executant or the apparent friendliness of the peasants from the mountains, Ernst is the witness of the historical revelation of the beautiful appearances, of the human lows and weaknesses. It is the experience that people that went through the horrors of the Shoah - as Bruckstein himself - had to live with thereafter.

The Rag Doll approaches a different topic, but nothwistanding a common occurence in the life of Jews in this part of the world: mixed marriages, when the Jewish member shall give up/hide his/her identity. The lovestory between Theo and Hanna survived the harassment against the Jews during the war but failed when Theo met a much younger colleague at work. Hanna gave up her Friday evening candle lightning as a 'protection' for her daughters. But once in a while, she cannot stand still when she hears the usual anti-Semitic references or longing for her family home and the life with her parents, murdered during Shoah that disowned her anyway after marrying a non-Jew. The precise location of the story is not mentioned but the name of the characters sound Romanian with some Slavic/German sounding ones, typical for the multicultural border areas.

Those two novellas by Bruckstein are important for the local Jewish history but also for the literary Jewish history in Romania. Hopefully, once the English translation is done, someone will have the idea to translate his works into Romanian as well.



Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for a honest review

[Cerisaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two novellas told in a traditional storytelling way about Jewish experience in Central Europe before, during and after WWII.

Deceptively simple, they show the rich way of life in what was then the Austria-Hungarian Empire, multi-ethnic, ages old, torn apart by the horrors of war, totalitarianism and genocide, how anti-Semitism wasn't anything new but brought to the surface age old prejudices, differences. That some people were brave and bold, some were cowardly and meek, most just tried to keep their heads down and wait for the storm to pass. Some were lucky and survived, many...most did not. Those who did, as we know, suffered much in consequence.

Bruckstein was a survivor: I have been through a major, global war and two minor, regional wars, seven concentration and forced labour camps, a flood, two minor earthquakes, three childhood diseases, a number of spiritual crises, and I am still alive. Why? I don't know.

These novellas don't depict what happened after the cattle trucks rolled away, though they do show the consequences. They depict ordinary rural life in villages far from main events, lives largely untouched by the war except for those who happened to be Jews. Lower and middle class lives, children growing up, young lovers, wives and husbands, doctors, lawyers, a priest, a midwife. Slowly, a detailed picture emerges of what it was like to be Jewish in that place and at that time. It is in parts wise, quotidian, humorous, tragic, bitterly ironic, always natural, realistic. I read the Kindle edition, with beautiful line drawing illustrations.